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“ WORDS ARE WHA T? ’ '—Jocinferia. 


MOBILE. 

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36 ST. MICHAEL STREET. 



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1888 




un^ all Bi0l)t0 ttle0erPfii 


JOHN P. Morton and company, 

LOUISVILLE. 


"Tl^e l^ocl^ or tl^e 


I. 

There was a yawping wind a-howl that night, 
with no mist to moisten it; yet it cringed and whim- 
pered, snored and was hushed incessantly, as though 
wet to its skin with a blizzard, 

Agamemna was deucedly cut up by her beauless 
walk from the grocery, and from finding thereat no 
letter from Rye; for she had expected him to write, 
remittingly. 

In the jim-jam lightning she saw her own profile 
clear cut athwart the suave and complaisant sky, 
like acids on litmus paper; and the dry, whitey- 
mauve sand swirled clutchingly about her massive 
feet in that wetless wind. 

And after what thundrous fashion those feet 
pounded warmbathward ! 

They hurled through narrow cow paths like a 
girPs from St. Louis; spanned over great holes. 


4 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


whose bottoms seemed rushing up to greet them; 
spurned huge boulders, as if they had been mere 
acorns ! 

Just a turn of the path, shadowing moon-mistly, 
rose the little one-horse drug-cabin, so familiar to 
Agamemna’s childhood’s post - peanutty cramps. 
How implicitly she believed the beautiful legend of 
its name. The negroes said it had been built by a 
tramp doctor, who had toted his physic in tin 
buckets ; hence the name, a-pot-he-carry ! 

This touching legend rose soulfully to her, even in 
this wetless windsomeness of a night whose scurry- 
ing lightnings swirled great boles from the armless 
trees. 

Her good Aunt Fizzigig met her at the cottage 
door and told her tea was cold ; but she replied that 
she had had a drop at the grocery ; hung her wind- 
worried hat on the wide hat-rack standing arm- 
loosely, and passed to her own room. There she 
found her 'little maid, Jerusha Matilda; Ajax, as 
Agamemna called her because her color defied the 
lightning. The little black occupied the sole easy 
chair, fast asleep before the fire ; one curled-ebony 
foot, with its hickory-nut colored lining, propped 
unsteadily upon the great toe of the other. 

That great toe went through Agamemna like a 
knife ! 

How Rye used to laugh at it! She put both 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


5 


hands in her pockets and great gusts of anguished 
shake swept through her palsing entity ; rending it 
with gaspous shiverings to the innjost recesses of her 
soulfulness, as a simoon of regret sweeps the sand- 
surges of sorrow, leaving only an agonized — dull — 
dry — arid waste! For the pockets were empty; 
and Rye — he, the one sole and responsible husband 
of Agamemna’s brief married life ! — he had not re- 
mitted 1 

In the agonized daze of that staggerous impact, 
the stricken girl half reeled and caught at the edge 
of the mantel shelf. Suddenly she released it and 
chasseed back with a wild, weird welkin-ringy 
shriek that shot Ajax straight out of her chair, 
spinning round on the memorous great toe, wide- 
wakened ! 

How Friteness doth elbow-jostle Truism ! It is 
the direct Meum of the most irrelevant Tuum ! The 
inspirator of Agamemna’s resonant yell was nothing 
more viperiferous than a half-smoked cheroot, lying 
ash-encumbered on the little brass tray, just as the 
man who had been smoking left it, three long 
months before.* 

Her eyes still fascinate-riveted upon her new find, 
Agamemna gave arm-sweep superb towards the 
portal. 


•^‘It is the habit, in some Virginian households, to dust the mantels 
once in two-months; but, apparently, not in all of them. 


6 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


* ‘ Git ! ” she hissed in a stage whisper behind her 
set teeth and from under her bitter tongue; and 
Ajax slid from the room into the dark hall beyond, 
like a guilty spirit through the back gates of Hades 
into the blackness of Acheron’s pit. Then, with 
panther - spring, Agamemna swirled her lissom 
strength against the door, slid the rusty bolt, then 
turned and threw herself wildly upon the remnant 
of her native Virginian weed. 

Kicking off both massive shoes, with one single 
impulse of her shapely femoral muscles, she sunk 
upon the hearthrug, stretching the wool-stockinged 
feet to the genial blaze, thus screening her entire 
person. The carbuncle waves of her glorious hair 
had rippled down from their fastenings, folding her 
white throat in a ruddy glow, as of spun fire. With 
impatient sweep of those gleaming, strong arms she 
clutched and twisted the shimmering masses, that 
writhed through her fingers like bloody serpents, 
and jerked them into a crowning crimson coronet, 
above her fair, broad brow. Then she showered 
frantic kisses upon the dry end of the cigar-stump ; 
shivering pitiful the while, and torn with short, 
gaspy little giggles, like a schoolgirl with her first 
mash. 

Then she lit it with a lightwood knot, and began 
to smoke in a passion of short, quick puffs — breath- 
less — noiseless — terrible ! 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. •j 

None of this will seem overstrained, to one who 
has had the jim-jams. 

In this very room Agamemna Comefret had pass- 
ed three weary months of absolutely married life. 
Three months ago her husband had had a dangerous 
attack of the monkeys, complicating his left liver ; 
the doctors had ordered perfect rest and change of 
scene; so he had left his wife and gone to the New 
Orleans races. Moreover, he had left her as utterly 
impecunious a grass widow as ever longed for com- 
panionship, amid the scenes of her pre-marital hap- 
piness. 

She smoked on, in quick, regretful puffs. As she 
smoked she watched the little wreaths spiralling 
through air, as evanescent as her hopes for the pos- 
tal-draft that evening; and their points seemed to 
stab her happiness corkscrewly. Then, suddenly, 
memory — or something — seemed to strike her a foul, 
below the belt. Sounds sounded in her ears. The 
fire danced and leaped and kicked up ; the splitting 
coals took on her husband’s face, wrinkled into 
fiendish grimaces. The room reeled round in a mad 
witches’ dance ; the sounds at her ear, now dinning 
into it with thunder tones, was Rye’s voice ! 

She had not, however, calculated the full potency 
of the grief that was about to claim her. As van- 
ished pains again shot across her inner diaphrag- 
matic consciousness, there came with them shivers 


8 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


and qualms and chills unimagined. She rose to 
heavy feet ; they trembled beneath her as the mad 
carmagnole of the furniture whirled faster and more 
zig-zagly. The voice at her ear roared now. It 
stamped and rollicked over her agonized tympana. 
She could hear the very words j reckless, rummy, 
passionate words, not meet for a gent to utter : — 

“Aga! — Agamemna! — Your uncurled hair is a 
grape-vine and your breath is a cocktail! You 
make me drunk! — Hie! hoo — ray!^^ 

In mighty, wild-surging pain the girl staggered to 
the door, launching her 200 pounds against it, with 
frantic screams : — 

^^Fire! Murder! Thieves! Set ’em up again!” 

Up the hall flew Ajax and Aunt Fizzigig, finding 
Agamemna prone upon her back ; the perfect hands 
clinched in the rubrant masses of coronetted curls ; 
the plus-perfect feet wildly kicking at nothings in 
the air. When they had laid her on the bed. Miss 
Fizzigig dipt a long, lean hand into a deep pocket 
and drew forth a quaint quart flask ; forcing its thin 
neck between the girl’s indrawn lips. 

With a great gulp Agamemna opened her tor- 
tured eyes, — closed them quickly and took several 
short, difficult swallows. Then she winked her left 
and muttered : — 

“I’m O. K! — Keno!” — and tried to turn over. 
A terrible shivering shook her from bang to pan- 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


9 


nier j with a pitiful moan, she fixed her left hand in 
Ajax’s wool, pulling for life as she panted : — 

Help me ! — quick — cuspidor — ah ! ” 

II. 

Jimsonweed was a typical old Virginia home. 

Mid-October in Eden could not have been nearly 
as perfect as mid-October at Jimsonweed. It is 
damper in Eden, and consequently more unhealthy. 

Through one of those plus quam Eden twilights, 
Agamemna loped lazily homeward, on the back of 
her favorite Broncho, imported for her direct from 
Siam by her overindulg6nt Aunt Fizzigig.* She 
was appropriately dressed in a bright red polo shirt, 
a pair of Rye’s corduroy hunting pants and most 
suggestively swell tan stockings thrust into red 
morocco boots. Her glorious noon-sun crown of 
curling locks swirled about her slant shoulders in a 
glint of dazzling tone ; while the almost too rich 
perfume from them, born of Pear’s soap and natural 
oil, floated out behind, yard wide and almost visible. 
Amid the jingly dancing masses of these hyper- 
ambrosial curls, the little scarlet polo hat seemed a 
dingy speck of brown. 

♦There is no need to name the Aunt here; but she gets her whack 
in so seldom in this story, that it seems only a fair shake to lead her in 
sometimes by the ear. 


lo THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 

It was Agamemna’s fad to avoid the side-saddle. 
Her feet fell profoundly on either side of her steed; 
thus securely balancing her. And she sang as she 
homeward rode; sang a song that her husband 
loved, in a rich West India fruity voice — not a mel- 
low voice, but a trifle overripe. And the words 
were these : — 

“ Bound to run all night — 

“ Bound to run all day ! 

“ Some bet dere money on de bob-tail nag, 

“ But I bet mine on de gray ! ” 

The horse had galloped to the door ; the strong 
hand had pulled him nearly to his haunches ; one 
fascinating stocking had fitfulled over his ears with 
the sough of summer lightning ; and Agamemna had 
landed both feet on the grass, ere she beheld a man, 
standing on the low step. 

One wild-eyed flash of lightning eye ; one stifled 
cry,— 

“Oh! Rye! Rye! You’ve hit ’em at last!” — 
and she launched herself catapultly against his vest. 

He was a strong man, with two firm calves and 
one bull neck; so he braced himself and only 
breathed a little hard. 

“ Come off! ” he said good naturedly — “You see, 
I’m not Rye, only Rock. — Now, don’t mind it like 
that ! / don’t, ’pon honah ! ” 

The Tyrian dyes in the kaleidoscopic imagery 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


II 


Upon the dorsality of the dolphin in articulo mortis, 
was never so brilliant varihuey as the tints that 
chased each other over the girlly cheeks of the mis- 
directed wife ! In their encrimsoning reflections, 
glowing sunsetly, even her massed curls seemed a 
shade less wildly rubrant than before. 

‘‘ Oh ! what micst you think of me ! ” she semi- 
sobbed with great shoulder-humps, burying her 
flamy face in the flowing mauve of a Siberian St. 
Bernard bloodhound, that came up and fawned upon 
her — “ what do you think ? ’’ 

Oh ! you’re all solid,” Rock replied convinc- 
ingly. 

She looked up glowing. “ I should smile ! ” she 
answered; “Feel my biceps;” and in the prideful 
purity of her strength she stripped her white arm to 
the shoulder and lunged it at him. He stopped her 
cleverly ; then felt her muscle. 

“ Well! You are a masher,” he said. “ Don’t 
mind my slang, you know. I belong to the Man- 
hattan, and all club men do it.” 

“ That’s all regular,” she answered with sweet 
dignity, “so long as it isn’t wormy chestnutty. — 
But say, you’re awfully like Rye ; even your voice 
and the way you hug a girl. ” 

“ Yes ; we are twin cousins, you know,” the young 
man answered. “And the singular part of it is that 
I feel everything he does. You have never kissed 


12 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


Rye, but my lips puckered ; I never smoke too much, 
but he gets nervous.’* 

“How terrible! How uncanny,” murmured Aga- 
memna, limb-swept by one of her most shuddery 
shiverings. “ It is like being possessed 1 ” 

“Yes, by two of us,” Rock answered gloomily. 
“ But, say, you remember the first spat you had 
with Rye ? The time you bit the piece out of his 
ear? — Well, look here 1 ” 

The gums of a yellow-ochre breeze were just be- 
ginning to cut themselves into the teeth of a brown 
gale, against the umber edges of the distant wood; 
and the violet reflection set all the dusk aglow. 
Agamemna looked up and lo! the large, pink ear 
lobe he turned to her was indentated crescently; 
serrated to the very irregularities of those perilous 
pearls, through which she now panted breath-catchy. 

“ This is wonderful ! ” she gasped. “ But you are 
not my husband! ” 

Not quite; but next best thing, Aggy ! ” 

They looked at each other in the dimming violet 
haze ; a long, deep, looky gaze. The woman spoke 
first. What could she have said, but this : — 

‘‘What does it matter? Let us give each other 
our red-hot thoughts.”* 

“ I will give you one white-hot now. I love 
you ! ” 


^Literal quotation from a recent novel. 


THE ROCK OR THE R YE. 


13 


She put her ungloved hand in his ; their full 
pulses throbbed into one. They drew ragged, but 
hemstitched, breaths together. He passed his 
strong arms about her and lifted her 14 stone 10, 
till the feet hung, limp but massive, a foot from the 
ground. She smiled witchly in the yellow gums of 
the adolescent brown gale. She felt it would be 
like this, if she had gone to visit her husband at the 
grand stand; and he had come up and sat on the 
edge and showed her pool-tickets, and every one a 
winner ! 

Suddenly she writhed and shook with a spasmodic 
tremor that rattled her rosy hair like leaves of an 
autumn forest. She panted and clung to him chestly, 
as she murmured from her boots: — 

“Oh! Rock, you are really, truly my husband’s 
double. Agony! O! Agony! should either oi you 
die, I never could be a widow ! It is pitiful — mon- 
strous ; but it is true ; — you and he and I are one ! ” 
And the gust-wind of passion bent and swayed the 
woman’s whole being, as it would rend her. 

“Yes; Rock and Rye are one,” the man said 
gloomily, holding her a little closer, if possible. “ It 
is the hand of Fate; but we must work the new 
rule of three ! ” 

It was blessed for Agamemna that her nose was 
digging into his vest and she could not see the 
smile he smole, as he spoke. Rather was it a grin 


14 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


he grule. The lips, thin and drawn, curled up to 
the eyebrows; the eyebrows, down-curved, lapped 
the lips; while the chin and nose sharpened and 
snapped together. Then he added : “We are one; 
and he must be backing every d — d loser at Orleans, 
for Pm busted flatter than Ingalls ! ” 

At that word, Agamemna gave no sound. She 
only grew cold — cold ! She did n’t even shiver ; she 
only limped. 

The bare, beautiful, blonde arms slid slowly down 
the man’s shoulders ; down, past his broad hips and 
well muscled thighs ; down, past his shapely knees, 
even to his slim ancles ! — She shut up upon her own 
being pocket-telescopely ; huddled a cold, clammy 
mass of faint and hair and tan stockings at her hus- 
band’s double’s feet. 


III. 

Rockfort Cheesley came to Jimsonweed the next 
day and the next for seventeen weeks ; but he never 
saw Agamemna. In all those days she never left 
her bed ; subsisting only on chocolate caramels and 
milk-punch; sending Ajax to the grocery, after a 
telegram from Rye, every 19 minutes by the old 
cupboard clock. 

What aeons of ages the double girl-wife lived semi- 
slumbery, in that stupor of the soul ! Tons pressed 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


IS 

down the motor-springs of thought, deadening the 
unborn intent, ere yet it blinked its off eye in the 
dawning glimmer of a possible To Be ! It was not 
the milk-punch that was the only deadener, as Miss 
Fizzigig thought. The spinster deemed it somesort- 
wardly due to ultra saccarnization super-imposed 
upon the cream-alcoholoids by constant caramelis- 
mistic pressure. 

But far down in the depths of her racked and 
doubt-tormented sub-soul, Agamemna knew that 
neither the spirit nor the comfit tore her thus into 
card-wool of dissevered and dissonant-jarred enti- 
ties. Oh ! that one long night, made up of hun- 
dreds of daylight hours and moonless ages, cement- 
ed frostly by quick-congelating doubts ! 

She fluttered, like a tortured gnat, between the 
wide-spread horns of the beefy bullock of dilem- 
ma. She was Mahomet-coffinal, in suspension- 
vibratoral between Rock and Rye ! 

One quiet, noony hour, when the leaf-breathings 
of the slumbrous oaks scarce fanned the dryad- 
cheeks in the shadow boles at their feet, Ajax crept 
into her mistress’ chamber. Agamemna slept 
deeply; a quaint, deep goblet — cream-encrusted 
and spoon-scarred about its rim, — standing empty 
on the or molu ^tag^re by the bedside. 

Ajax had a pretty trick of waking her mistress 
by gentle breathings into the dimples of her pon- 


l6 THE ROCK OR THE RYE, 

derous, but perfect, ancles. This time the little 
black breathed until she grew giddy and would 
have grown blacker, had not pigmented prismal 
combinations forbid the phenomenon. 

Slowly the roseleaf lids, heavy with sorrow — or 
something — revealed the dawn of those Aurora-ed 
eyes ; and Agamemna saw — propped upon her dim- 
pled knees — the longed for telegram. With light- 
ning flashy zig-zags of her perfectly manicured 
nails, she tore it open and, hungry-eyedly, gulped its 
scribbled contents. Even undigested, they were 
enough : — 

“ Mrs. Agamemna Jimsonweed, Forkear Co. 

“ Pumped again ! The Bard lost and Chouser fell at the 
hurdle. Plumb busted — left liver gone — can’t get home. 

“ Ryland.” 

The words burned into the girl’s tortured eyeballs, 
deeper than Jove’s lambent ire ever seared into cos- 
mic bowels. Huge, gaspy heaves of breath sibilated 
through the hard clenched pearls, indented plainly 
through the drawn, non*rubyrous lips. Shivery 
sighs tremored her bulbous throat, forcing the 
pharynx down upon the larynx ; dossing the billowy 
bosom, that shook its light lace from snow-shaming 
contours, in waves of stormy nudity ! 

Suddenly the dimpled knees spasmodicked to the 
chin ; the massive feet — toe-tipped shrimp-pinky as 
a Naiad’s — shot the comforter corner-roomly ; and, 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


17 


with a single bound, Agamemna stood in mid-floor. 
Barekneed and cardinal crowned with luxuriance of 
curl, she flew Atalantaly down the dusty hall ; paus- 
ing before a huge old oaken chest, iron bound. 

One spurnful thunder of her grand pedal ! The 
locked lid flew back, with malicious, baggage-smash- 
erous swirl. 

Stooping her sleek, white back and scooping her 
nudity of arms, Agamemna gathered the mass of 
old clothes to the ivoriness of her bosom j then fled 
to her room and fell prone upon the bed, chilled to 
her marrow, fevered — palpitating — shiverous ! 

Ten minutes later she was on the sloping, treach- 
erous, sleet-covered lawn, playing tennis with Ajax. 
She had delightfully decorated the little black; 
having a keen eye for color and exquisite sense of 
harmony in music and horseflesh. The child rev- 
elled in a short and shrunken sacque of bright 
orange flannel ; around her waist a broad swathe of 
crimson calico, the ends flapping around the burnt 
umber legs that marked the snow like high notes on 
a page of the “ Witches’ dance.” On her head was 
the gray -black slouch hat, in which Agamemna’s 
grand uncle had ridden to Gettysburg; and the 
brilliant girl, with absolute fervor for the game, had 
added three ostrich plumes and embroidered the 
motto — '■^Ich dien^^^ (I serve). 

In retro-ratiocination, rather than by glancing be- 


l8 THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 

hind her, Agamemna felt more than saw, a noble 
man form resting against the rich verdure of a mid- 
summer oak. 

He caught the boomerangy ricochet of her thought 
upon the wicket of his tennis-latticed soul, as from 
its depth he groaned : — 

<‘Ah, there!” 

‘‘Stay there!” promptly girl-cried the deserted 
wife, now forgetful of all her woes and basking in 
the rayful warmth of a beatitudic To Come. 

^^Stay there ! ” she repeated, with ringing merri- 
ment in the voice — “until I say, — Coined' 

And the grand creature — her clinging tennis suit 
of flannel colored jersey setting off the divine swell 
of figure, wax-workly — whirled swiftly round and 
glinted upon him a wondrous-woven wink of soul- 
most meaning. 

A second more and his fringeful lip was imminent 
to her upturned rubies, as he whispered : — 

“May I — darling, May I — serve 
An earthquakic, spasmic shiver shuddered her 
from toe-tip to bang. Then she lay limp in the 
strong encompasment of biceps and flexor, and 
panted : — 

Fifteen — love ! ” — 

And the four lips clung into a kiss. 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


19 


IV. 

Agamemna slept all night wide-eyed with gusty 
fitfulness, embroidered in arabesque night-mares of 
gray monotone. Gradually she wakened fully at 
gray dawn, to find Ajax breathing heavily upon her 
ancles. Having accomplished that, the eerie black- 
armidget held out a note, written on the back of a 
telegraph blank. It was in a well-known hand ; and 
Agamemna’s heart grasped it ere her sensuous fin- 
gers had clutched the paper. He wrote : — 

“I’m off for N. Y. next train. Big dinner at the club. 
Must go and bombard pictures with jam tarts. Besides 
you won’t divorce Rye and run off with me. Send a lock 
of your glorious hair. It will warm me upon the Pullman. 

“ R. c.” 

The eyes Agamemna turned up at Ajax were 
heavy with sleep and disgust. 

Hand me my type-writer,^^ she said. “ Consarn 
it ! move live ; can’t you ? ” 

Then she ticked out, with running accompaniment 
of shiverings, gaspings and bowlings, this reply : — 

“O. K. We’d best not meet again. Can’t consent to 
divorce, unless your luck changes. Farewell for ever. 

“ Aga. 

“ P. S. On second thought I’ll drive you to the train. 

“ P. P. S. Come to lunch.” 


20 


THE ROCK OR THE R YE. 


So, that noble self-immolative nature nerved itself 
in heroismic strength to harness the Siamese Broncho 
to the dog-cart, white-handily, while Rock smoked 
his post-prandial cigarette in the hammock. 

Then, as they jolted over roots twistwise serpen- 
tine across the red roads, Agamemna’s hand listlessly 
fell into the pocket of Rock’s short sacque coat. 
A vast, thrillious tremor shook the man from heel 
to brow. He grew dizzy, closed his eyes and 
leaned back so far that the dog-cart tilted and 
the shafts lifted the pony high in the air. Then 
his voice rang through the woods, sonorous, horse- 
laughy : — 

“ Keep it there ! — Ah ! — don’t move it ! ” he mur- 
mured brokenly. “ Oh, darling ! — the delight ! — the 
novelty ! It’s the first time I have had anything in 
any pocket for a month ! ” 

With blood-gushing surge of tint that stained 
brow, cheek, neck and, perhaps, bosom boiled-crably, 
Agamemna withdrew her hand. 

“ Emptiness ! ” she muttered with bitter emphasis 
behind her pharynx, “ emptiness everywhere ! Oh, 
heaven! deem me not rebellious, but why — Oh! 
why this full, o’erflowing plethora of vacua ! ” — and, 
whipping up her steed, the girl-widowed grass-wife 
dropped her hand back into the pocket, while huge, 
aqueous pearls rolled down the oval of her jaw, sea- 
saltly. 


THE ROCK OR THE RVE. 


21 


The station reached, just as the fast mail rushed 
by at 4 miles an hour, Rock sprang from the trap to 
the rear platform, shook his light valise in farewell ; 
with his haolloed Tra-la-la ! ” bounding back from 
her overstrained intensity like ball from wicket. 
Unable to think, Agamemna picked up a young 
neighbor of the horse-shoeing persuasion, clad in 
red-flannel shirt, aniline yellow hair and leathern 
apron. Driving him homeward, she overflowed her 
numbering regrets in a spring-freshet of talk on 
theosophy, rat-baiting, local anaesthesia, and the 
Sanscrit novel in the last magazine. 

But all that night she was wind-shaken by gusty 
sighs that seemed to lift her very soles. Torn by 
half-gasps, she reeled till the high-canopied bed 
creaked in harmony to the agonized octaves of her 
discordant brain ! Hideous sounds seemed to howl 
around her; hideous sights pierced through her 
closed lids and seared her sense; shapeless forms 
mocked her wide-eyed aching, as they floated by 
processional ! 

“Am I going mad?’^ she moaned, kicking the 
bolster into the corner — ‘ ‘Am I losing my little wits, 
because Rye can not strike the winner ? Oh, Rye ! 
Rye ! win for me ! win for me ! — Oh! Lord, let him 
hit the favorite, — just once ! ” 

She burrowed her nose in the bedpost and tried 
to pray. She could not! Vast waves of passionate 


22 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


poverty washed all the dye out of her words. 
“ God’s imagined face took on a horrible grinning.”* 
The little angels f, loafing around the Throne,” 
seemed buying losing pool-tickets on the next flying- 
match of 100 yards. Nothing seemed honest, — 
nothing seemed sober ; all had the jim-jams, herself 
included. 

With a slim glide of her lissom limbs, Agamemna 
squirmed from her bed, landing single-springly in 
mid-floor. Shaking her grand head, the golden 
hairpins in her coiled fleece of fire swirled round her 
in a glistening shower, gemming the dusty floor as 
stars in an urbane storm-sky! One more twist of 
the strong limbs and her wrapper left the shining 
satin of skin, as she stood Godivaly in the spun 
filament of her red-gold capillam 1 

One wave of the grand right arm — one sweep of 
the strong left, and the North and South windows 
flew awide! 

A mist-veil of hail was fleecing down, sleeting 
aslant the cold face of Midnight. It smiled at the 
tickling breath of the Southwind, low whispering of 
the mountain tops, whence it escaped from its cra- 
dle, half-gale-born ! Through the soft flakes peered 

’J'The author reluctantly confesses that this reverently beautiful 
image is not original. He hates to do it, but he must. It was written 
by a poor old man named Hugo, thus '.—‘*Et le bon Dieu, dans son car- 
actere de vieux philosophe, sourit." 

fThis poetic sentiment is also a grab, but from nearer home. It 
was evaporated by a once-green American poet, who is still Hay. 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


23 


curious optics of stars, blinking to take in beau- 
ties she should have unveiled only to the Moon, 
had almanacic incongruities served the Queen of 
Night. 

And thus — clothed on with airiness, the girl sunk 
on her knees by the bed, with low, wailing wind-sob 
of moan, — canine in its pitiful depth of pain, far — 
far beyond the reach of ginger ! 

The flecked fleece flew in either window on the 
strong draught, whirling an aureole at meeting, just 
over the red glory-crowned head; then softly shift- 
ing down upon the shining shoulders, — thence to 
the floor carded-woolly. The breath of the wind- 
god blew colder from the South by sou-norwest. 
The flakes grew larger and more unmeltuously 
solid. Still they fell upon the slant-sloping shoul- 
ders, glanced to the floor, rose ancleward up to the 
dimpled knee ! 

Agamemna recked not of them. Chilled to the 
very marrow of her soul’s bones, she still pondered 
upon her own inclement future, undiverted by trifles 
light as summery snow flakes. 

si« * * * * * 

Next morning, at gray dawn, Sarah — a shrivelled 
African, full of sympathy, muscle and apple toddy 
— prepared her mistress’ bath of attar of roses, di- 
luted with a teacup of warm water. 

Where was that mistress ? 


24 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE, 


Sarah dug her out of a six-foot drift with the fire 
shovel, warming her with embraceful sympathy and 
a hot Scotch. 


V. 

Some days after, Agamemna was reading the New 
York Herald. She fainted dead away in Sarah’s 
arms, on catching this paragraph in the race news : 

“ At Coney Island yesterday, Mr. Rockfort Cheesley back- 
ed Distance Boy, odds 559 to o. Mr. Cheesley made a clean 
scoop.” 

Opening her eyes with a gasp, Agamemna clutched 
both hands in her glorious hair, uncoiled the clinging, 
live-coal curls — showering shimmering hair pins over 
the Persian rug. Then she flew to the telephone, in 
the corner of her boudoir, and rung up New York 
nervous-twitchingly. 

Central, give me the Manhattan Club, please ; — 
eh? Yes, the Manhattan — eh? No, not Mulhat- 
ton — Manhattan . ” 

A breathless wait of four hours. Then a faint 
sound tickled the shell-tint ear, with the feathery 
dissyllable, — 

“Hello!” 

“Is that the Manhattan Club. Is Mr. Rockfort 
Cheesley there?” 

“Wait, — Yes, he’s in the bar room. I’ll call 
him.” 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


25 


Soon came the loved-familiar voice : — 

“ Hello ! What’s up ? Are you a dun ?” 

“Rock!” 

“ Dar-r-ling!” 

“ So you’re happy at last ? Distance Boy made 
you solid?” 

“ Da — hem ! Distance Boy be blowed 1 Every 
dun in town tumbled to that lie of the World 
reporter, meant to make me solid with my landlady.” 

"So you did not win?” 

“ Nary red.” 

“Then — then come to me! ” 

“All right; next train. Central, disconnect Jim- 
sonweed.” 

Agamemna threw herself prone upon the Persian 
rug. Of course, huge gasps shook her frame shiv- 
erly. Equally of course, short, rending breaths rent 
her bosom jelly-quiverish. When she had shaken 
and gasped and quivered sufficiently, she rose and 
put back the coiling rubricity of her gore-lit locks 
from the marble of her mental mantlepiece. Then 
she stealthily opened her writing desk and took her 
entire correspondence with Rye Comefret, in both 
her hands. This consisted of the one telegram, here- 
inbefore transcripted. 

With hot-eyed eagerness she devoured it over and 
over; backwards, upside down and through the back. 
Desperate resolve seared deep lines in that pure face ; 


26 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


cold determination curdled the youth upon it into 
cream-cheesy sallowness. 

The lithe smooth arm, Rye had so often kissed, 
darted out viciously. The telegram was in the blaze 
— rollicking, shriveling — crackling! As it curled 
black into nothingness, a cruel smile twisted the rich, 
ripe lips ; but the nose smiled not and the eyes were 
as cruelly cold as woman’s charity to an erring sister. 
Warned by the creeping heat she dropped the cin- 
der. The fire dots died out of it, as hopes die one 
by one in unmated spinsters. But still she hovered 
over it, ever repeating, murmurous : — 

“ Rye ! This divorces us!” 

Backing to the door, — an awful pity freezing the 
words as some midnight service for the damned, — 

“ This divorces us !” 

She exiled stealthily and turned the key upon the 
outer side. Then she dropped upon her knees and 
sent the hollow, blood-freezing tone through the key- 
hole : — 

“ This divorces us ! ” 

* * ^ SH * * * 

There was a heavy tread in the hall below, as the 
slant sunset dyed the swart East with aniline tints, 
patented only in Virginia. 

Handsome, hectic and with a suppressed hiccough, 
Agamemna descended the unsteady stairs. She 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


27 


paused not at the door, but passed bravely up to the 
rug, where Rock stood with his hands in his pockets, 
firebacked with ruddy glow. 

Hug me, Rock/^ she said naturally. 

“ Wait a bit,'^ the man answered gloomily. “ I’ve 
a conundrum for you first.” 

‘^None of your wormy chestnuts,” she rippled 
back in playful irony — ‘‘ Hug me ! ” 

He repelled her with lifted foot. — “ Not yet. You 

are going to marry me ” 

“Yes! hug me.” 

“ With, or without, a divorce ” 

“ Rockl hug me.” 

“ Whether I win or lose ; and whether Rye wins 


“ Hug me ! ” 

“ Not until you answer me fully ” 

She broke down his guard ; and with long, tent- 
aculous arms, clung to him desperately, as he strug- 
gled and gasped : — 

“No, my pantherous John L. Sullivan, not till you 

tell me Nay, you shall answer, my beautiful 

Mitchell dodger ! ” And, with a quick heel-lock, he 
bent her back to the tiger-skin rug, holding her down 

with his knee upon her tumult-heaving bosom 

“ Now ; you will love ” 

“ Hug me ! Hug me 1 ” 

“ Love only me ; no thought of ” 


28 


THE ROCK OR THE EYE, 


“Ah, Rock ! hug me ! ” 

“ Any other man ! I am as grasping as a beg- 

ging Church Charity ; and I’d sooner work for a liv- 
ing than share ” 

“ Hug me ! ” 

“ The half-wife of a twin husband ! ” 

“ I love you more than everybody ; more than 
Rye, — more than myself — more than you and Rye 
and myself rolled into one ! — Now — hug me ! ” 

He removed his stiffening knee ; took both her 
shelly ears in his strong hands and lifted her face to 
his ! 

jjc jjc ^ jjc jjc ^ 

VI. 

Gush — kisses — spoons — hayricks — spats — impro- 
prieties — bathos — least-said-soonest-mended ; weeks 
of such delight as few lovers have known, and (it is 
hoped) few will know again. 

One Tyrian dyed twilight, with the glint of para- 
dise upon the tree tops and the indescribable aroma 
of warm supper, wafting on the half-breeze that 
fanned her ruddy cheek, Agamemna sat in the win- 
dow of her boudoir, lazily swinging her No. 9 slip- 
per at the ash on Cheesley’s cigar, glowing so cheer- 
ily below her. 

He looked tenderly up at her ancles. ‘ ‘ Lord ! 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


29 


How I love you ! ” he murmured. How can I prove 
it? — Look! I have loved a hundred women and 
have kissed them pretty promiscuously, from the 
bangs down. But, I never kissed a woman^s foot 
yet. Aggy, your shoes are slipshod — but look 
here 1” 

He tiptoed and kissed one instep, then the other, 
osculating mumblingly, sole, heel and upper. 

A wild, shuddering spasm shot cramply up her 
ancle-nerves, into the very arca-namous recesses of 
her sensitivity. It racked her strong, young limbs, 
until the window panes rattled and the shutters 
shook from their hinges. But the prideful smile 
never left the half-opened ripeness of her lips. 

“Come off, you masher,” she sighed softly; and 
dropping the No. 9 deftly from her foot, she caught 
him central on the curls of his forehead, spinning 
him on his back amid the lush masses of sere oats, 
where he sprawled, Antinously. Then the twinned 
octaves of their harmonious cacchination swelled to 
the welkin wedding bell-wise. 

Just then Ajax, puffy by her run from the grocery, 
slid catly into the boudoir behind her mistress. 
Without a word, she extended a postal card, hearsy 
and pally with black postmarks and damp with the 
dews of evening, or of perspiratory touch of the 
ebon hands pink-shrimp-lined. 

Agamemna read it at a glance. A great lump 


30 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


rose in her throat, a film came before her eyes and 
the horizon bobbed up serenely as the tree tops spun 
in a dizzy waltz. With one great soundless sob, the 
affianced wife-bride slid from the window sill, land- 
ing plump upon the centre of her still laughing be- 
trothed. And when Cheesley got his second wind 
and pulled himself together, he stooped over her as 
she lay. He found her silent — icy — dead ! 

^ 5 }: 

Agamemna was unconscious for 29 hours and 33 
minutes. On reviving, her first irrational wish was 
for Cheesley; and, although it was 3.19 o’clock, 
A. M., she insisted on staggering down to the front 
step, where she had embraced him on the evening of 
their first meeting. Her cloaky mass of cardinal 
hair fell through the night, like the streaky flames 
of a smoky kerosene lamp. 

Cheesley crept up dumbly and lay, rheumatism - 
deflant, upon the wet, pre-dawning grass. There 
was a moony haze abroad that night, that lazied 
limply athwart the breast of the drowsy half-storm, 
touched into a smile by the wooing starlight. It 
misted itself down and veiled pally between these 
two, enstrangedly met. 

Agamemna’s face was marbled stilly. Vast waves 
of sursound boomed against the breakers of her 
cast-iron resolve, dwindling witlessly into the sub- 
silence of her grayish brown intensity. 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE, 31 

Thick hushedness loomed longly. Then Rock 
wrigged closer. He tried to lift the heavy feet he 
had lately kissed, and placed them upon his neck. 
She withdrew them solidly; then, mechanical- 
womanly, sat upon them. 

‘‘Look here, do I bore you?” the man asked 
chilly, jellying into freeze by the fixed zeroism of her 
manner. 

“Nothing bores me,^^ she answered dead-levelly 
— “ Nothing ever will bore me more. Here’s some- 
thing you must read.” 

“But how can I, in the dark?” he said with a 
wan failure at a laugh, that died as the gibber of 
ghouls at a graveyard picnic. “Wait till morning.” 

“ There will be no morning,” she moaned voice- 
hollowly, fumbling in the folds of her robe-de- 
chambre. 

“ My poor darling ! What a shock it was ! ” 

“ You bet ! ” she replied, looking straight over his 
head at the dim distant grocery. 

“ My poor love ! You look so cold. Give me 
your feet: let me hold them and warm them.” . 

“You may hold one of them — the biggest one,” 
she sighed dreamily. “Wait a minute till I find 

.” She groped fitfully in her shoe ; and finally 

held out to him the postal she had received. 

“What is it? What do you mean?” he cried 
hoarsely. 


32 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


It is my wedding postal. You must read it/* 
she ghost-sighed. 

^‘Aggy, darling! Great lord! You*ve got *em 
again ! ’* he cried. ‘‘ Let me call your aunt ! ” 

She seized him by the ear as he rose, and gently 
but firmly put him down again ; placing her foot not 
untenderly upon him. 

have not the jims,” she said, not unsweetly, 
“I’m plumb sober. This postal is from my hus- 
band — my husband.^ do you hear? — and he’s won — 
A pile!” 

Cheesley bit his lip until the blood spirted out, 
high as her head and flecking her hair with conge- 
nial consanguinity. The voice was frozenly calm, 
but it came from behind his ears, in which he growled: 

“ Another chestnut ! ” 

“ It is not,” she answered calmly but far-awayly, 
“ for he tells me the name of the horse. And you 
have not married me ! — You have not married me ! ” 

With a mighty squirm, he turned aside her massive 
foot and stood erect before her. “ I could n’t, Aga- 
mem! When you speak like that you break my 
heart ! ” — She neither spoke nor looked at him. Her 
eyes were glued to the postal card. He went on : — 
“ Besides you have n’t any divorce.” 

“ Nor you any stamps to get me one,” she an- 
swered sadly-sweetly. — “ I have nothing but this 
postal. It is all I have all I have ! — ” 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


33 


With slow, heavy-handy grab he took the postal 
and read it with gloom-dazed eyes. 

“ What must I do ? ” he muttered after a hoarse 
pause. 

‘‘Go away, please; — anywhere,” she answered 
cheerily. “ Rye will be home for breakfast, and you 
know he would n’t ” 

With a wild cry he threw his arms about her 
strawberry head, crushing it vicely against his breast. 
“But you said you loved bemoaned. “You 
said it — acted it ! ” 

She lay torpid on his breast, winter-snakely. No 
tremor touched her voice in answering : — 

“ I did. Rock. — I did. But Rye was 'flat busted 
then.” And once more her eyes fell to devouring 
the postal card. 

“ I’m a chump ! A flip chump,” the man groaned, 
in all the eloquence of agony — “ a chump that any fly 
grass-widow can play for a flat and win. — No hard 
feelings, Aggy. This time I’m a goner for good. No 
more telephoning; and I’ll walk to the station. 
Ta,ta!^' 

He turned and strode away; his grand figure 
glooming through the mists. 

Agamemna never raised her eyes from devouring 
the postal card. “Au revoir,” she muttered, in a 
long-absent voice ; and went on reading. 

At the first fork of the path, Cheesley turned ab- 


34 


THE ROCK OR THE RYE. 


ruptly, rushed back fiercely and fell before her, wal- 
lowly. He seized both her feet, placing them on 
his head once more. 

‘‘Aga!” he cried grovelling — “soon you’ll be 
flush. Say : — ‘ I’ll lend you a tenner, Rock.’ ” 

She said it, very sweetly, as though she meant to 
do it : — 

“ I’ll lend you a tenner, Rock but above his 
buried head she made strange signals, with fingers 
wriggly-expanded and thumb held close -nosely. 

He held her feet a moment; then rose and went 
down the path with a flip-flap. But Agamemna was 
still reading the postal, when Cheesley closed the far 
front gate, bang-slamly. 


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